Neale Richmond’s Iveagh House office was once the dressingroom of Gwendolen Guinness, Countess of Iveagh, a favourite stop on the tour offered to visitors to the building handed over to the State in 1939.
Like the brewing family, Richmond is Church of Ireland, though his life is far removed from them, growing up in Ballinteer in south Co Dublin, opposite Marlay Park, and now living in Stepaside.
The contrast has uses, the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade argues. There are many types of southern Protestant, he says. For some, their background is front and centre; for others, it is rarely spoken about. For many others, their background has relevance culturally, but no longer religiously.
During this month’s Dáil debate on unity, Richmond told of being called “Orange scum” or “West Brit” growing up and “Lundys”, “Free Staters”, or “Fenian scum” when playing rugby in Belfast.
READ MORE
The legacy left by last year’s abuse of Fine Gael presidential candidate Heather Humphreys over her family’s ties with the Orange Order during her campaign has left a poison in its wake.
Richmond’s maternal grandfather, he says, came “from just outside Cootehill” near the Border in Co Cavan and was an Orangeman when every Protestant neighbour was a member of the local lodge.
“He woke up one morning and he was on the other side of the Border. He was still British, he was still Irish and he never saw himself being more British than Irish, or more Irish than British,” he says.
While the hostility towards Humphreys left many Border Protestants concerned, it was weaponised by unionists as evidence of the Republic being an unwelcome place for people of their heritage.
Border Protestants, says Richmond, have had different life experiences to other southern Protestants, coloured by the Troubles, where “there was always a mentality of keeping the head down and being careful”.
However, they were, and are, a significant part of Border communities. “Look at Monaghan – where there is a big Sinn Féin vote now, but where there has always been a very big Fine Gael vote,” he says.
Meanwhile, Dublin Protestants – with far higher Church of Ireland numbers – have always been caricatured as “a bit more middle class, with more of them going to slightly nicer schools”.
These are “sweeping generalisations”, he says, but southern Protestants are not a “homogenous group”.
“Heather’s campaign was a real gut punch,” he says, noting the first question at her campaign launch was: “Can you confirm or deny that your husband was in the Orange Order?”
In reality, every male Protestant before the Troubles, bar a minority, would have been members, says Richmond.
“Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t be in the Orange Order. I’m no fan of what they stand for, or their admission criteria, but they were making out as if it is some extreme fundamentalist terrorist organisation,” said the Dublin Rathdown TD.
He asks whether a question would be put consistently to people in the Dáil who have convictions for republican activities: “Were they in a terrorist organisation 40 years ago?”
Richmond accepts the criticisms of Fine Gael’s campaign, especially its failure to deal with questions about Humphreys’s background.
Some failure he attributes to her late arrival on the ticket after the party’s original candidate, former European commissioner Mairead McGuinness, withdrew.
Believing Humphreys to be “extremely popular within Fine Gael”, the party assumed this would apply more broadly, yet it had never properly thought through how she was to be presented.
Humphreys deserves credit for leading the Decade of Commemorations covering significant but politically tricky centenaries, says Richmond, where she spoke about her own background and her grandfather’s signature of the Ulster Covenant to oppose Home Rule.
Richmond believes too many remained silent to the abuse she received during the campaign. He says he would have loved a political or non-Fine Gael gene pool figure to state publicly, “This isn’t right.”
He praises Fianna Fáil Minister Darragh O’Brien for campaigning with her in north Dublin, describing it as a “real genuine, generous act” for a friend with whom he had served in Cabinet.
“Lots of people in Fianna Fáil weren’t happy that he did that either,” he says.
The Humphreys chapter matters in Richmond’s eyes because he wants to see Irish unification. He wrote a report in 2021 called “Towards a new Ireland” arguing for exactly that.
Those who vocally demand unity must realise that attacks upon the identity of Protestants, or other sectarian abuse, are not only unpleasant but also counterproductive, he says.
“If we’re really serious about a new Ireland, then you have to appeal to the moderate centre in Northern Ireland from a unionist background, or even those nationalists who have doubts about unity,” he says.
Many in such communities are “up for a discussion” but don’t want to be lectured to or bullied, he says. They “might vote for this” if convinced it would improve their lives.
Equally, those pushing for unification must persuade those with concerns about post-unification political instability or sectarian tensions or the cost of unification.
Richmond accepts there will always be people “from the Protestant-unionist-loyalist” population who will never be persuaded of the merits of unification.
“We’re not going to win them over. That’s fine. They do not want to be part of a united Ireland. Surely, first and foremost, we must respect that they’re British. They don’t want to be part of Ireland.
“However, they may one day become part of a united Ireland,” he says, adding that they will have to be given a proper, respected place in a unified state.
“If people want unity, if they’re really serious about it, then they need to mind what they say,” he says.
Richmond believes conversations about unity happening now “weren’t realistic 20 years ago”.
“This could happen. We could be voting on this. If you’d said that to me when I was starting out in politics, I wouldn’t have believed you. Someone said it was gone for a generation,” he says.
“Well, that generation’s passed. If people want unification, then we need to do a lot better than slogans and flag waving – a lot, lot better.”
